Pain points for startups/businesses with fewer than 30 employees.
Being an entrepreneur myself and managing my office for the last 2 years, clocking good productivity levels while keeping the operations costs low had been a critical aspect for sustainability.
Not to generalize, but looks to be more convincing to me that startups or small businesses with employees between 2 to 30 seem to encounter a set of common pain points which cannot be avoided but needs to be tackled with grace. I would like to call these companies as striving companies.
Founder’s Presence Is Critical: It calls for the owner or the founder to be present and deeply involved with the daily operations. Often the teams are seemed to be drifting away from goals and clocking low productivity when owners or founders are away on a market research or on a business trip.
Activity Tracking: Startup business activities may rain upon an entrepreneur and hiring a manager for such activity tracking may prove expensive especially when the business is not that big. A business is also never that small that the founder himself manages all activities easily!
Access to Premium Tools: An entrepreneur of a striving company is constantly boggled with the use of free/expensive tools to manage and track multiple activities effectively. It is very crucial to vision a growth pattern while also being able to make informed decisions. ‘StartupDear’ offers a 6month Free tool for such needs and thereafter charge only a hosting/maintenance fee.
Jack of All…: One of the important trait of an early stage entrepreneur is to be able to wear multiple hats performing roles of HR, IT, Accounting, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service etc.,. It kind of works, but it’s really hard for one person to be the best at all things. It really boils down to the decision to hire one for these position.
Big Projects: Striving companies are endlessly tantalized by big projects while having only a minimum bandwidth to get them executed seems to be a big pain point. A smart way is to look for outsourcing these projects to a reliable partner at a lower cost.
Not all the pain points hold good especially for entrepreneurs with a practical vision, limited middle management and can handle stress well. The main attribute is to see it coming and be ready for it helping them move through it gracefully and come out stronger on the other side.
Please share your thoughts and help the startup community grow. Thank You.
